social media services

Do you want to grow your Google+ Page? Are you looking for ways to get your Google+ Page noticed? Most people broadcast their content on Google+ and hope for engagement, but there are better tactics to grow your audience on Google+.1. Circle Other Profiles and PagesCircling others is an easy way to grow your Google+ follower base. To segment your followers, you can create circles specifically for location, industry, niche, etc. For example, if your brand page has a particular physical location, create a new circle that’s just for people and businesses in your area. Start adding people and business pages. If those people already have circles related to the same area, add those circles as well.When people see that your business is in the same area and you’re connected with similar people, they’re more likely to circle you back. You see the two-way link in the image above? (It’s at the bottom of the Canva image.) It means that both pages have circled each other. If only one liked the other, there would be a one-way link. Those links are an easy way to tell if a page is following yours or not.If you want to build relationships, having people in circles already makes it easier for them to add you back.2. Add a Google+ Badge to Your WebsiteI’m always surprised when I find a website or blog that doesn’t have a clearly visible Google+ badge so people can immediately follow their page.These badges make it super-easy for people to add you to a circle and Google+ notifies you when someone adds you to a circle. It’s good to know when someone starts following you. You can visit their Google+ profile, interact with their posts and begin to build a relationship.3. Be PersonableVery simply, act as your business page, but let people know it’s a real person posting. In the image below, you can see that I put my name on my comment so people know it’s me responding, not just a faceless business.If you have a team of people handling your Google+ page, you can ask them all to put their names on their posts and comments so people can connect your brand with real people. When people feel like they know you, they’re more likely to add you to their circles.4. Share Content in CommunitiesWhether you’re participating in a community as your personal profile or as your business page, consider sharing your content there. If you’re looking for reach, Google+ communities can definitely help. However, check each community’s guidelines to see what kind of sharing is OK.If it is, you’re good to go. If you’re sharing relevant, quality content that adds to the community, many members will add you to a circle.5. Attend Google+ EventsYou can almost always find a Google+ event that’s relevant to your industry, niche, product or audience. Try to attend those events when you can because the discussions are usually lively and enlightening. You can gain all kinds of insight there.You can also get to know a lot of people when you engage at an event. Relate to people. Talk with them. Offer your take on the topic at hand. When you share the stuff people like and they feel like they know you better, they’re likely to add you to their circles.A Google+ event may take an hour of your time, but if you get an additional 10 or 15 quality followers, wouldn’t you be happy? Sure!6. Use +Post AdsWhen you use Google AdWords and +post ads to promote your page content, that content flows across the 2 million sites that are part of Google’s Display Network.The interactive +post ads encourage people to engage with your page even when they’re not on Google+—viewers can +1, share and yes, even circle you right from the ad.I encourage you to test out the ads and track whether the uptick in new followers and other engagement metrics justify the spend (i.e., the cost per acquisition for a new follower).Over to YouMany businesses have trouble building their Google+ business page, but it doesn’t have to be an uphill struggle. Instead of broadcasting your message and crossing your fingers, try a more targeted approach.Use your existing connections to extend your page’s reach, participate in memes to keep your brand personable and attend Google+ events to network with like-minded people. Any of the tips I’ve shared here will help you grow your followers.What do you think? How have you grown your followers on Google+? Do you have even more tips to share? Let us know in the comments below. Try it out and see if that approach gives you an uptick in followers. We are providing Social Media Optimization Services india if you want to grow more rapidly than contact us.

These seven steps provide a good benchmark against which you can assess and plan your current SMO activity.

If I may be allowed to stand on the shoulders of a giant I would add my thoughts to each of these seven steps as follows:

1. Reputation

Your reputation in my view starts with ensuring you are either an expert or you act as an expert curator. This means undertaking thorough research and producing original content or curating quality content. This will make you a respected and qualified source.

Your reputation is also about how you engage and support people. Your reputation will be enhanced if you openly share your content and expertise including content that is not your own, engage with others through discussions and commenting, and if you are friendly and helpful to people.

I think fundamentally your reputation is enhanced by simply being helpful to people.

2. Engagement

You need to actively engage with your audience. This can include commenting, mentions, shares, likes, and plus ones. No one is as smart as everyone so share other peoples’ content and provide a good user experience by providing feedback and comments.

You need to target the networks with which to interact and make it easy for people to interact. It may be that people will interact with content on your site but you may find a far greater number of people willing to interact in their existing communities such as Google+ communities and LinkedIn groups. You can combine these by using say Google+ comments on your blog. Asking users to create accounts on your site will discourage users from commenting so use existing social logins such as LinkedIn or tools such as Disqus.

You can also encourage people to engage with a call to action, for example if you find this article helpful please shares it. If you think I have missed anything please add your comments below.

3. Authority

There are many aspects to authority. Search engines are interested in ascertaining what individuals and brands are seen as authoritative and trusted by real people on the Internet. The most obvious example of a move in this direction is Google Authorship. Setting up Google Authorship can help establish you as an expert and show your profile prominently in search results. For example I have spent many years researching the elearning market and writing a monthly market update. Thus when you search for ‘elearning market’ you will hopefully see my result (image below) with my picture and a link to my profile.

You can also enhance your authority and the value of content through social proof. In essence the more your content is shared through plus ones, retweets, bookmarks or likes the more it indicates the value and usefulness of your content. It may also encourage others to read your content. For example, my recent post on Google+ and SEO received over 2,500 plus ones and a thousand retweets. Hopefully this means a fair number of people found the article helpful and shareworthy. I am sure it also helps the SEO, as if you search for “Google+ SEO” the article was at the time of writing appearing high on page one of the results page.

4. Leadership

To me leadership is about high quality research, thinking and original content production.

A leader will research everything they can about their areas and share thoughtful insights which will add value to your audience. Poor quality content will be perceived as such and as a consequence will not be shared. As a leader you can also create value for your audience through content curation. This means adding value to content by providing a summary, adding context or a perspective to the content you are sharing.

5. Social

You also need to build high quality networks; quality potentially matters more than quantity. Seek out the experts in your field, read what they say, engage them in debate and share your ideas.

6. Media platforms

It is important you focus on the right platforms and communities Where does your audience hang out? Find and focus on the platforms, communities and groups where your audience hangs out. Some platforms are far more effective in improving the SEO benefits of SMO than others. In my view the most effective platform is Google Plus for many reasons which are set out in the article I mentioned on why Google Plus will improve your SEO.

This was reinforced in recent days by the post I mentioned from Dustin Stout on social signals and Google+. His research led him to conclude that Google is counting all activity from all Google+ posts back to the original blog post. Thus in Dustin’s view “Google is trying really hard to give your shared links all the social credit they deserve.”

7. Optimization

I have included below some of my thoughts on the practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO below. Share buttons – make it easy to share for users by adding share buttons to your content. You should also show the numbers of shares to demonstrate social proof. Social Icons – group and display your social icons in a prominent place on your site.

Subscription options – group together subscription options such as email, RSS, and newsletters.

Shareable content – some content is more readily shareable such as infographics or 5 top tips articles. I think this is partly because it is short and scannable. However, I hope and believe longer but well written content will also be shared.

Social login – use social login options to make it easy for users to comment.

Rich snippets – social networks pull in rich snippets, data designed to summaries the content of a page. These are very useful for users. The different social networks pull in this data in different ways. Facebook uses OpenGraph, Twitter uses Twitter Cards and Google Plus will take values from OpenGraph, you just need to set up your authorship profile for your rel=”author” tag to work correctly. If you use WordPress you can use the Yoast plugin to manage and optimize these rich snippets

Title tags – Optimize your title tags for sharing, especially on Twitter where there is a character limit and include your name.

Images – they really do say more than a thousand words. Include images that add value and include an image that can be used as a thumbnail for your content.

Thanks again to Joshua Berg for his Real Social Media Optimizationframework and for the work of Dustin Stout and Mark Traphagen. I hope through my reflections and additions I have added some value to the way you think about and approach the Social Media Optimization of your Search Engine Optimization.

This is to be continued post of my previous post enjoy the reasons and don’t let them loose your followers.

Reason #11: Not tweeting regularly

There are several programmes out there that can analyse which of your followers are ‘dead wood’ due to not tweeting very often. One of these programmes is Tweet Adder (see my product review of their new 4.0 update). I stop following people if I don’t see any action on their account for 6 weeks. I assume many other people do the same. If you want to keep your followers, be sure to stay active on Twitter.

Reason #12: Tweeting TOO frequently

I’ve seen some Twitter accounts Tweet almost non-stop (sometimes as frequently as twice a minute!), flooding my Twitter stream. This is a sure-fire way to get unfollowed. The only people who might have an excuse for such high frequency Tweeting are global newswires.

Reason #13: Tweeting the same thing over and over

I Tweet many times a day, typically about every 10 minutes. However, I have THOUSANDS of Tweets that I rotate, and I am continually creating more content every week. But Tweeting the same thing over and over with little or no variation is bound to get you un-followed. Why would I follow you if nothing is ever new?

Reason #14: No original content

Sharing other people’s content is great, but sometimes that’s ALL people do on Twitter. These people will ReTweet whatever strikes their fancy at the time, and don’t have any particular focus. After a while, their followers might get tired of them and unfollow them. Don’t rely solely on ReTweeting if you expect to grow your following. People what to know who YOU are; work on creating your own presence.

Reason #15: Your Tweets are irrelevant to your followers

It’s a given that if your followers are not interested in your Tweets, they’ll unfollow you. The best way to ensure people stay following you is to actively seek out people who share your interests and follow them first.

Reason #16: Your Tweets don’t make sense

A heck of a lot of people doesn’t bother to READ their own Tweets through the eyes of their followers before they post them. I’ve scratched my head on numerous occasions trying to figure out what someone meant by one of their Tweets. If I can’t make heads or tails about what someone is talking about, I’ll unfollow them. Oh, and ‘making sense’ goes for bios too.

Reason #17: Every Tweet is a ‘sales’ Tweet

If you do nothing but Tweet stuff like ‘Check out our such-and-such deals’ or ‘Get my book on Amazon’ or even ‘Find us on Facebook’, watch your numbers decline. And, if you’re a spammer trying to ‘sell’ followers, please just give up!

Reason #18: Following too MANY people compared to your followers

If you follow WAY more people than follow you (like 10 times more), it tells people you’re either really unpopular or really aggressive. Besides, if you follow 1000 people and very few follow you back, you’ll be stuck at the ‘Twitter wall’. This means new people will be unlikely to follow you because you won’t be able to follow them back (see my book Tweep-e-licious for more information on the ‘Twitter wall’ and how to get un-stuck).

Reason #19: Following too FEW people compared to your followers

If I see 10 people following you, and you are only following 10 of them, this tells people you are not very engaging. Unless you’re a public figure of some kind in whom I have an interest, I’d be unlikely to follow you because I’d assume you’d ignore me.

Reason #20: Your CONTENT is disproportionate to your following

Sometimes I see people following close to 10 people and they’ve only Tweeted a few times (or sometimes not at all). Without content, those you have followed are unlikely to follow you back. This type of behavior sends the message that you are following people in a contrived way rather than organically.

Conversely, I see people with maybe a few hundred followers, and they’ve Tweeted tens of thousands of times. This tells me they have a tendency to over-saturate a small number of people, which is also not a good sign. I look for balance and proportion in someone’s account before I follow it. If they have 10,000 followers, sending out 10,000 Tweets (over time) is proportionate. But if they have 500 followers and they’ve sent out 10,000 Tweets within a couple of weeks, that’s overkill.

Twitter is a HUGE part of my business. It is also directly responsible for about two-thirds of my website traffic. I believe in the power of Twitter, but I also know that, in order to succeed, your marketing strategies have to be organic, relevant, consistent and engaging:

Organic – don’t force your following to grow. Think arithmetically. If you’re just starting out, follow a few people every day. As your following grows, follow a larger number of people a day.

Relevant – The best way to ensure people follow you (and don’t UN-follow you) is to make sure you connect with the right people in the first place. Make sure your content has great informational value and that the people you seek are interested in the content you intend to share with them.

Many join Twitter to grow an online presence. But not everyone gets fast results. Here are 10 things NOT to do to ensure you won’t sabotage your Twitter growth.

Since Twitter banned auto-follow and auto-follow back (see my earlier article from July 1013), I’ve been spending a lot more time vetting who I follow and follow back on Twitter. As a result, I’ve been following far fewer people on Twitter every week than I used to. Naturally, this is due in part to the fact that it takes a lot more time now that automation is no longer allowed. But it is also due to the fact that I have become much more selective about who I want to follow.

During the vetting process, I’ve noticed the same 10 criteria keep cropping up as ‘deal breakers’ helping me decide whether or not to follow, follow back or unfollow people on Twitter. As these criteria are probably being used (consciously or not) by other Twitter users, I thought I’d share them with you today, so you can avoid these pitfalls, and make your Twitter profile an irresistible force to you ideal audience.

Reason #1: Inadequate bio information

Twitter gives you 160 characters to fill in your profile. Use them. Make every character count. Make sure it SAYS something about you and/or your business, so people can judge whether or not they want to follow you.

Reason #2: No profile image

No matter how camera-shy you may be, don’t fail to upload a headshot or company logo. When people see the default Twitter image in your profile, they tend to assume a) that you don’t know what you’re doing on Twitter yet; b) that you don’t care; or c) that you’re not a ‘real’ person but a spammer/robot. Say cheese!

Reason #3: You have a private account

If you set your account to ‘private’, prospective followers won’t be able to see your Tweets. Why would people follow you if they cannot know what you Tweet about? I wouldn’t.

Reason #4: You don’t speak the same language

If you are multilingual and you are trying to target a specific audience, be sure your Tweets are consistently in the language of the audience you are targeting. Otherwise, people might start unfollowing you if they start to see Tweets they cannot read. Remember: you might understand their language, but they might unfollow you if they cannot understand yours. You might wish to have multiple accounts for different languages.

Reason #5: YOU USE ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME

Gosh I hate that. I never follow people who ALWAYS WRITE IN ALL CAPS and I unfollow them FOR THE SIMPLE REASON THAT IT IS ANNOYING.

Reason #6: You use WAY too many hashtags

I love hashtags, but some people will put a hashtag at the beginning of every word (frequently combined with #USINGCAPSALLTHETIME). Apart from being damnably irritating to your followers, there are SO many reasons why over-using hashtags is pointless. See my earlier article ‘5 Ways to Use Hashtags on Twitter or Facebook’ to find out wise ways to use them.

Reason #7: You’re just interested in getting followers and have no focus

Some people are on Twitter for no other reason than to get followers. They talk about NOTHING other than to say ‘Follow me’ or #TeamFollowBack. All they tend to do is tell how many new followers they got that day. I never follow such people. What’s the point?

Reason #8: You don’t bother to follow people back

In direct contrast to #7, there are also people on Twitter who hardly ever bother to follow (legitimate) followers back. Personally, except for large organisations that don’t tend to follow anyone back, I will unfollow people if they haven’t followed me back after a couple of months. Some people will unfollow you if you don’t follow back within the week. If you are losing followers, this might be the reason. Take a look at who’s following you that you are not following.

Reason #9: Never talking to anyone else

If you never take time to say ‘hi’ or ‘thank-you’ to people, or you never ReTweet or reply to people’s comments, your followers will get miffed and are likely to unfollow you. If prospective followers see no engagement, they might not bother to follow you in the first place.

Reason #10: ALL you do is talk to other people

The flip side of #9 is when someone ONLY uses Twitter as a kind of global instant messaging service, and is constantly engaged in chat. Being sociable is great, but if all you ever do is chat-surf, some people might not wish to follow you.

Mostly everyone thinks of marketing as the business of promoting and selling products or services.

Marketers commonly refer to a “pyramid” to describe the way they attract new prospects and convert them into customers.

What Do We Mean By Pyramid?

Traditionally, we’ve prioritized our limited resources and time on trying to find and convert new prospects (the top of the pyramid).Keeping those hard-earned customers (the bottom of the pyramid) has often been an afterthought.

That’s because, until recently, there was little we could do to keep existing customers that was drastically different from the tactics used to attract new ones.

Historically, the best you could do after turning a prospect into a customer was to provide a great customer experience and just hope they come back to buy more—and bring their friends with them.

But technology, namely social media and email, has changed the game.

Social Media Marketing:

But in case of social media marketing what we do is the reverse the reversing the pyramid .

Social Media Marketing is about recognizing that your existing customers are your best assets.And technology now enables us to influence consumer behavior both before and after the sale.

With low-cost and easy-to-use tools like social media and email, you no longer have to hope that customers come back and bring their friends with them.Now you can reach out to your existing customers to remind them to come back, and make word-of-mouth as easy as clicking the share, like, or tweet buttons.

Bottom line: successful businesses understand that marketing does not end with the sale, but rather it begins after the first sale (the bottom of the traditional sales pyramid).

Social Media is an Important Part of Your Marketing Mix, but Not the Only One:

Social media marketing is not a replacement for other marketing tactics and we highly recommend that you continue to do what has worked for you in the past.

Traditional marketing activities that still work for you, like advertising in a newspaper, sending direct mail and attending networking events, are still essential.

However, for most, social media marketing is now a critical component of an effective marketing strategy.

In fact, social media marketing works best when combined with other marketing activities especially email marketing.

Now that you are up and running on Facebook, we have something to tell you… not everything you post will get seen by all of your fans. We know, we know. How could that be? Well Facebook does their best to make sure its users aren’t overwhelmed by messages they don’t want. In this section we’ll show you how this works and what you can do about it with News Feed Optimization (NFO).

While NFO doesn’t necessarily sound like the most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal… trust us, you’ll start to appreciate its power soon.

We’re going to show you data from BrandGlue, a company that helps brands reach more eyeballs by ranking higher in the newsfeed algorithm using NFO. They’ve helped a lot of businesses, including Intel, icanhascheezburger Networks/Fail Blog/LOLCats, Microsoft, Mint.com, the Washington Redskins, and Kiva.

In reality though, research shows that 96% of fans never even revisit fan pages once they’ve “liked” them. That means that in most cases your fans see your posts in the personal newsfeeds and decide whether to “like” it, comment on it, share it, or do nothing right in their newsfeed, not on your Facebook Page.Fans won’t treat your Facebook Page like a website they visit and read, instead they’ll interact with it if you’re doing the right things.Content that attracts your fans’ attention in their newsfeed is the holy grail.

Effective Facebook strategies focus on content that looks compelling in a user’s newsfeed to generate likes, comments, and shares.

The Facebook Algorithm

What is the Facebook Newsfeed Algorithm?

We’re not going to get into all of the details, but what you need to know is:

Facebook didn’t want to crowd your newsfeed, so they created an algorithm that hides content it thinks you might skip anyway.

That means that just because you post something to your fans, it doesn’t mean they’ll all see it.

Unfortunately, average fan Pages rank low in the algorithm so that 50-70% of fans never see the content in their newsfeed.

You need to focus on driving the actions that impact NFO “like” impressions, likes, and comments.

Impressions Are Your Best Friend

Lots of people look at Facebook Insights and get confused about why their total impressions are higher than their total number of fans. Total impressions are a count of everything, but what you should really care about is unique impressions -how many different people you reach, not how many times you reach one person. And how many impressions you get are what measures how often you show up in fans newsfeeds.

If you want to rank extra high in the algorithm, you might want to hire an NFO agency (such as BrandGlue). It’s similar to SEO, except it’s for the Facebook newsfeed. And it’s very effective at reaching more eyeballs.

While sales should be higher on this list of benefits, the bottom line is that it’s difficult to attribute revenues back to each piece of marketing touched. Therefore, the last piece of social media marketing used often gets credit for delivering the sale.

Yet in today’s multi-platform, multi-device world, the reality is that multiple pieces of marketing contribute to a purchase. 50% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to improve sales.

Further, since much of the sales process occurs before the marketer is aware that the customer is in purchase mode, it’s unlikely they can track these results.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

Incorporate a contextually relevant social media call-to-action. Encourage social media followers to take the next step such as signing up for emails or looking at product on your website. Don’t ask for “personal” information upfront (Note: This includes mobile phone numbers!)

Offer targeted discounts and deals on your social media platforms with care. Be careful since you don’t want to train your followers to show up only for deals. To this end provide other useful content and fan support.

Create tailored landing pages. Encourage social media fans to engage with you on your site. Keep the scent of your marketing consistent.

Take your time romancing your prospects. Don’t expect your social media services followers to convert to buyers immediately. They’re on social media to socialize with their family and friends not to get sold to.